1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an array configuration testing method for managing disk drive in disk array, more particularly to an array configuration testing method cross-testing the serial check sum of each disk drive in the same array and the quantity of disk drives in the array as well as disk sequence/function record in order to check data integrity in the array configuration.
2. Description of Related Art
The rapid market growth of information products has urged the development of new technologies and new specifications in information industry. As to data storage device, the data transfer rate and data safety are important issues. Therefore, RAID (redundant array of independent disk drive) is proposed to meet above demands. RAID 0 (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks level 0) array provides the function of data striping to boost the data access speed. RAID 1 array provides the function of data mirroring to ensure security and safety of data storage and system stability. In addition, RAID 0+1 array, a combination of RAID 0 array plus RAID 1 array, has advantages in both data transfer speed and data security.
FIG. 1 shows the schematic diagram of a multiple disk-array system. The multiple disk-array system comprises a computer 32 connected to a plurality of disk arrays of various types and a plurality of independent disk drives 191 and 193 in a span array through an interface card 14. The plurality of disk arrays includes a first disk array 16, a second disk array 17 and a third disk array 18.
The first disk array 16 is a RAID 0 array which includes a first stripe disk drive 161 and a second stripe disk drive 163. The second disk drive array 17 is a RAID 0+1 array, which comprises a first stripe disk drive 171, a second stripe disk drive 173, a first mirror disk drive 175, and a second mirror disk drive 177. The third disk drive array 18 is a RAID 1 array, which comprises a source disk drive 181, a mirror disk drive 183, and a spare disk drive 185.
To access data in the disk drives of the disk arrays or the span array, the computer 12 firstly finds an accessing address of the data in corresponding disk drive, and then accesses the disk drives of the disk arrays or the span array through the adaptor card 14.
Dealing with such an enormous architecture, correctness of array configuration will be very important; a minute mistake will cause serious damage to the whole system.